Not something I know anything about really, but this video features my friend's brother, John. It'll soon be part of a Channel 4 documentary about the condition.

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It has to come from some over educated genius that sticks purely to the medical books, in order to not receive criticism from you, it seems.

As far as Jenny McCarthy, that is her child. A mother isn't going to do anything to knowingly harm their children. And you can't get what the power of the love and determination of a Mother means or is, from any textbook. Not everything that works is going to come out of a university or hospital study.

Oh, I wouldn't for one minute suggest that McCarthy is deliberately harming children - I'm sure she genuinely believes her rubbish. Wakefield on the other hand is an awful man. Despite your personal attack against me, Wakefield was actually a medical doctor, trained at a top UK medical school (St. Mary's, now part of Imperial College). He was struck off for research fraud, and is very lucky not to have faced criminal charges.

It's because of people like him that children in the UK in the 21st century have died of a disease that's been largely eradicated since the 1970s.

I'd be interested to know how someone can be 'over' educated.

Last edited by Elessar on Sun Apr 29, 2012 2:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

MMR isn't the first vaccine to have been part of a health scare, and it won't be the last. There are numerous examples, but I'll describe a few. They all share the same characteristics: They involve right-wing media, and lead to an increase in deaths from the disease being vaccinated against. They are also always based either on bad science, or no science.

Smallpox: In Sweden in the 1870s, the smallpox vaccine was opposed due to various religious objections, as well as an argument that vaccination schedules removed individual choice. There was then a smallpox epidemic.

Pertussis: In the UK, in 1974, doubts were cast on the effectiveness of the pertussis vaccine. Kids started dying of whooping cough.

Hepatitis B: In the 1990s, there was a scare in France that the hepatitis B jab causes multiple sclerosis.

MMR: This is by far the most 'successful' health scare. Although Wakefield's research ethics were appalling, and since then he has gone from bad to worse over in America, teaming up with Jenny McCarthy and the likes, his original paper wasn't actually that bad, and didn't say that much about a link between MMR and autism. It's the media who went crazy with the idea later, and then Tony Blair's kid made it even worse. Ben Goldacre explains it up nicely: http://www.badscience.net/2008/08/the-medias-mmr-hoax/

Polio: In 2001, some people in Nigeria believed that the polio vaccine is part of a US plot to spread AIDS to the Muslim world. They boycotted the vaccine, and polio, almost entirely eradicated worldwide, returned in Nigeria.

HPV: The most recent one. HPV can cause cervical cancer, and a vaccine was introduced. It has been met with fierce opposition, on the basis that it will apparently encourage underage sex (because HPV is a sexually transmitted virus, and the vaccine is given to pre-pubertal girls).

Elessar wrote:Jenny McCarthy: “Until doctors start listening to our anecdotal evidence, which is it’s working, it’s going to take so many more years for these kids to get better"

The sad part is that she does not know how ignorant that statement actually is.

Delilah, I don't think that's fair. She is deep in the trenches in this as are all parents and people with autism. I know parents of children with autism and hear about their daily struggles, failures and triumphs. Their desperate for help and answers. Not going through it myself I cannot judge them. One thing I have observed is each case is completely different, which only makes finding those answers more difficult. It takes a lot of strength to navigate something like this.

AutumnGirlLybbie wrote:Delilah, I don't think that's fair. She is deep in the trenches in this as are all parents and people with autism. I know parents of children with autism and hear about their daily struggles, failures and triumphs. Their desperate for help and answers. Not going through it myself I cannot judge them. One thing I have observed is each case is completely different, which only makes finding those answers more difficult. It takes a lot of strength to navigate something like this.

Yeah, that's what McCarthy says as well:

"Every parent will tell you something different that helped their child."

...which kind of makes you wonder what this book is all about:

So every child is helped by something different, but her book will help everyone. Okay.